Got up really early at around 5am and headed to the Pacific Whale Foundation. At around 7am we boarded the Ocean Voyager with about 100+ tourists and headed for Molokini. On board the staff was very friendly and served us breakfast of muffins, fruit and juice. After about a 30 minute ride in the warm ocean breeze we docked at Molokini along with 5 or 6 other ships and went for a dip. The last time I snorkeled was in 6th grade at Catalina Islands off the coast of Los Angeles. The water was freezing even with a wetsuit on, my googles leaked and everytime I put my face in, water would go into my snorkel. I also didn’t know how to swim, but for some reason the adults wern’t concerned about that and dumped me in the water anyhow. I spent an hour hopelessly paddling around trying to hold on to a inner tube the group had with them to save drowning kids. Needless to say, it wasn’t a good experience. I was a bit afraid that the water here would be cold since we’re pretty far from Maui. But, I’m here, so might as well do it. I grabbed a snorkeling life vest and a noodle and jumped in with flippers, goggle, snorkel and camera. The water, it turns out, was actually quite warm, about 70F and quite clear.
After a few minutes of watching everyone else swim around with their heads down, I finally got the courage to put my face in the water. My goggle didn’t leak, I could breathe and there was stuff to see! Fully enjoying myself now I spend the next hour splashing around chasing fish trying to get their pictures. There was plenty of fish, including milletseed butterfly fish, moorish idol, and black durgons.
Jae stayed by my side for the most part, he enjoyed chasing after the fish and trying to get closer to them. I watched him as he chased this dinner plate size fish around. Suddenly he stopped in the water and then frantically tried to swim away from the fish. As I watched, a stream of brown stuff was released from the fish and started to travel towards Jae. Hee hee, I guess the fish didn’t care much for Jae and showed him so….

Turtle Town
After about an hour or so, we boarded the boat and took off for Turtle town. On the ride over we had a bbq lunch and saw some whales pass by in the distance. After 30 minutes we reached “Turtle town”, or rather the spots where the green sea turtles like to hang out. We put our gear back on and jumped in, the water was colder here but just a few degrees less than at Molokini. We swam out and followed a Marine Naturalist for a guided reef tour. The guide would swim over and pick up certain items to show us, he brought up a collector urchin, a slate pencil sea urchin (native Hawaiians use to use it for makeup during dances) and pointed out some other interesting fishes. While swimming around we actually saw 2 green sea turtles! They were swimming well below us but we all tried to snap pictures anyhow. My disposable underwater camera didn’t do too good a job of capturing the fast swimming tutles. We spent the rest of the time swimming around trying to find more turtles.

After an hour we had to go back. I was quite tired by then so I was glad to go. On our way back to the dock the captain spotted a turtle right alongside our boat. We looked and sure enough there was a turtle swimming alongside the ship with it’s head sticking out. Then all of a sudden we saw another one and then a pair, pretty soon we saw 5 or 6 turtles swimming around the area. It was pretty neat to see them with their heads sticking out looking at us. That was quite a treat for our little snorkeling tour.It was past 12 by the time we got back to the dock and went home, where we took a nice long nap. We didn’t bother doing anything more for the day, afterall this is Maui and relaxing is the main event.

Got up nice and early today at around 7 and made breakfast of hash browns, eggs and bacon.

We then took our guide book, got on highway 30 (Honoapiilani Hwy) and headed west. Our first stop was at Kapalua and went hunting for the Makalua-puna Point (Dragon’s Teeth). The guide book didn’t give detailed directions to the exact spot so we had to guess a little. We ended up at a parking lot and after some debating about whether to skip the stop or go look for it, we got out of the car and walked around looking for some sign. We eventually walked across the Ritz Carlton golf course, dodging balls and hiked through large pointy rocks to get to it but the view was worthwhile. The Dragon’s teeth were created by the lava flow during the dying days of the volcano. The salt spray on the upwind side etched the lava into pointy teeth. The view from there was spectacular. This spot was so hidden that no one else showed up while we where there. It truly is a hidden gem. After taking some pictures we hopped in our car and headed to our next stop.

Next, we went in search of the Nakalele Blowhole, this is where the ocean undercut the shoreline and spits through a man-sized hole in the lava shelf. The strength of the blowhole varies with the force of the ocean. We didn’t see the blowhole when we first got there, after a few minutes of hiking we came to the edge of a hill and saw the blowhole in the distance. Rocks, lots and lot of rocks and the rest of the hill stood between us and the blowhole. I just had to see the thing up close, so we went back and got our tennies, then we carefully climbed down the hill. After about 15 minutes of making our way through the rocks we reached the bottom. The blowhole was blowing, a good one every few minutes. We spent the next 20 minutes trying to take pictures during a good gust. We got a few pictures but was never able to get a really good one, oh wells. Someday I will learn to take a proper photograph and capture moments like this.
The climb up wasn’t as bad as going down, but half way up I was wishing for the fully commercialized tours of other places. Where are the stairs, rails, guides, and trails? By the time we got up we were breathing pretty hard and dripping in sweat. Good thing I will be marrying Jae, because I sure don’t feel very attractive after this workout =P After a short break we continued on our road trip.

Our third stop is the Olivine pool, this was a place that the guide book touted as their own discovery, which is probably true since there weren’t as many people. We actually missed the pool on our first stop and had to drive further down to the next turnout to find the Olivine pool. When we got to the edge we saw that once again our destination is far away below us with quite a difficult climb down. This time it looked worse than Nakalele. We decided not to go down and instead took tons of pictures to document the event. A few brave vacationers went down there and swam in the pools. It looked like a lot of fun. I shall come back someday soon and make that trip down to the pool.

By now, we were both very tired and hungry, so we decided to head back and find lunch. On our way back we stopped by Lahaina town and ate at Cheeseburger in Paradise. This seems to be quite a famous spot in Lahaina town. The burgers are all right, I’d say Islands is better, but their pina colada is awesome. On the way back to the car, I bought a cute Plumeria charm at the Lahaina shopping center to validate our parking ticket (2 hr parking is free with validation).

Got up really early at around 5am and headed to the Pacific Whale Foundation. At around 7am we boarded the Ocean Voyager with about 100+ tourists and headed for Molokini. The friendly staff served us breakfast of muffins, fruit and juice. After 30 minutes cruising in the warm ocean breeze we docked at Molokini along with 5 or 6 other ships and went for a dip.

The last time I snorkeled was in 6th grade at Catalina Islands off the coast of Los Angeles. The water was freezing even with a wetsuit on, my googles leaked and everytime I put my face in, water would go into my snorkel. I also didn’t know how to swim, but for some reason the adults wern’t concerned about that and dumped me in the water anyhow. I spent an hour hopelessly paddling around trying to hold on to a inner tube the group had with them to save drowning kids. Needless to say, it wasn’t a good experience.

I was a bit afraid that the water here would be cold since we’re pretty far from Maui. But, I’m here, so might as well do it. I grabbed a snorkeling life vest, a noodle and jumped in with flippers, goggle, snorkel and camera. The water, it turns out, was actually quite warm, about 70F and quite clear.

After a few minutes of watching everyone else swim around with their heads down, I finally got the courage to put my face in the water. My goggle didn’t leak, I could breathe and there was stuff to see! Fully enjoying myself now I spend the next hour splashing around chasing fish trying to get their pictures. There was plenty of fish, including milletseed butterfly fish, moorish idol, and black durgons.

Jae stayed by my side for the most part, he enjoyed chasing after the fish and trying to get closer to them. I watched him as he chased this dinner plate size fish around. Suddenly he stopped in the water and then frantically tried to swim away from the fish. As I watched, a stream of brown stuff was released from the fish and started to travel towards Jae. Hee hee, I guess the fish didn’t care much for Jae and showed him so….

After about an hour or so, we boarded the boat and took off for Turtle town. On the ride over we had a bbq lunch and saw some whales pass by in the distance. After 30 minutes we reached “Turtle town”, or rather the spots where the green sea turtles like to hang out. We put our gear back on and jumped in, the water was colder here but just a few degrees less than at Molokini. We swam out and followed a Marine Naturalist for a guided reef tour. The guide would dive and pick up certain items to show us, he brought up a collector urchin, a slate pencil sea urchin (native Hawaiians use to use it for makeup during dances) and pointed out some other interesting fishes. While swimming around we actually saw 2 green sea turtles! They were swimming well below us but we all tried to snap pictures anyhow. My disposable underwater camera didn’t do too good a job of capturing the fast swimming tutles. We spent the rest of the time trying to find more turtles.

After an hour we had to go back. I was quite tired by then so I was glad to go. On our way back to the dock the captain spotted a turtle right alongside our boat. We looked and sure enough there was a turtle swimming alongside the ship with it’s head sticking out. Then all of a sudden we saw another one and then a pair, pretty soon we saw 5 or 6 turtles swimming around the area. It was pretty neat to see them with their heads sticking out looking at us. That was quite a treat for our little snorkeling tour.It was past 12 by the time we got back to the dock and went home, where we took a nice long nap. We didn’t bother doing anything more for the day, afterall this is Maui and relaxing is the main event.

Stopped by the bookstore and bought Maui Revealed - The Ultimate Guidebook 2nd Edition by Andrew Doughty & Harriett Friedman. It turned out to be the best thing we bought for this trip. The book is filled with information about the best places to go see in Maui. After eating breakfast and consulting our guide, we took off for Lahaina Town.

Lahaina, or cruel sun town is pretty nice, it is the only town in Maui with a real downtown. All along Front St. were tons of shops filled with jewelry, clothing, and food. We spent a good few hours browsing and shopping. The stores were not really special, but it was nice just to look and cool down from the heat outside.

We stopped by the activities center and asked about snorkeling trips. We told the lady at the counter that we had previously talked to one of the guys in Kihei and he quoted the Pacific Whale Foundation snorkeling trip for around $50. She signed us up for it, $100 (the original quote from the guy that gipped us on the Luau was really $59.95 each).

Lahaina truly lived up to her name and the heat soon got to us, we headed back to the condo to get ready for the Luau.

We arrived to the Marriott for our luau at around 5 pm. The hotel is really pretty, everything is outdoors and the place was well maintained. Our luau was at the back part of the hotel, with a great view of the beach. there was about 20 or so tables, each with about 10 people. We were seated at a table with 8 other people, of which, 6 were from California. We chatted, drank Mai Tai’s, Pina colada and watched for whales in the distance as we waited for our food. Everytime there was a whale sighting everyone stood up to try to get a look, but all that can be seen is a spurt of water far off in the distance.

Before long, we heard the horn of a conch shell. The Luau has begun! There was the general welcome announcement, then we were told to come up to the front to watch the preparation of our dinner. Everyone gathered at this great pit/oven and watched as our dinner was dug up from the ground. Yes, I did mean literally dug up from the ground. They did this with quite a bit of ceremony. What was finally revealed was a nice fat pig/boar? It smelled so good, but after seeing that it was covered with dirt just minutes ago, it didn’t seem so clean. Hopefully the dirt didn’t get into the wrappings. After our dinner was dug up they took it away to shred it into pieces. We went back to our seats and waited. I thought that it would’ve been nice if they had served some salad or soup while we waited.

As we waited, the clouds that were overhead started to gather and within moments, big fat drops of rain started coming down. We figured it was going to be a short shower and then it would go away soon so we attempted to stay dry by putting the green cloth dinner napkins on our heads. But within 10 minutes the rain started to come down pretty hard. Jae and I climbed under the table, hoping that the rain would soon stop, other people climbed under the table with us. I sure hope they have a plan B! Within minutes we knew it was hopeless, our luau was rained out. We were told to start heading back up to the hotel.

We waited in the covered but outdoor lobby of the hotel to see what would happen. It turns out there was a plan B. The luau would now be held indoors in their ballrooms. Interesting….. Some people didn’t want that and asked for their refund. We didn’t have a choice due to our limited time in Maui. About 45 minutes later, they finished setting up the ballroom. Everyone rushed in and sat anywhere they could. Our host came in and said all the apologies, but by now, all we wanted was food. Eventually they announced that dinner was ready.Finally!! We were told to go in sections by table so that we wouldn’t be waiting in long lines. Sooner or later everyone got food. The food was very good =) As we ate we were entertained by dancers, fire breathers and music. Overall the evening was quite enjoyable. I didn’t miss being outside since I’m sure I would’ve gotten cold from the ocean breeze.

Got up at around 8 am, got our bathing suits on and headed to the beach, only to find that it was drizzling outside. So instead we got in our car and went looking for breakfast. We went to this really nice restaurant called Marco’s South Side Grill and had breakfast in their outdoor terrace. Afterwards we drove back in the direction of the way we came and went shopping.

The shops were full of Hawaiian clothing, shells, jewelry, and all sorts of wooden masks. I picked up two sets of beautiful shell wind chimes, I just love wind chimes and couldn’t resist. The wind chimes are made entirely of shells and about 4′ in length. I’ve seen them in San Diego, but they were quite expensive, around $50+. I asked the guy how much it was and he told me, ‘$35, but for you it’s a special $25.’ Tempting… I then looked around some more and spotted a smaller wind chime that is shaped like a bird cage with a wooden bird in it. The owner of the shop was asking $8. After a bit of negotiating we settled for $28 for the both of them. I was quite happy with my deal. I think I’ll keep the big one and give the little one to my mom.

Along the way we stopped by an Activities Center and bought tickets to attend the Marriott Luau tomorrow evening. We’ve heard that it was one of the better ones on the island. We bought the ticket for around $70 each, but soon found out we were ripped-off because we saw the same Luau for $40 in a magazine. I suppose you can’t win them all

We then spent the rest of the day playing in the waters. The ocean was very very warm, a wonderful 73+ degrees. Even though I’ve lived very close to the beach for the past 6 years, I’ve never swam in the ocean before till now. It was a lot of fun. The only problem was that every once in a while you’d come upon a patch of volcanic rock and had to be careful not to hurt yourself on them.

Even though my flight was at 8:50, I was at the airport by 6 since my mom had to take me there before she went to work. Traveling alone isn’t all that fun since there is no one to talk to while you’re waiting. The flight was pretty uneventful, the plane was pretty empty so I got the row to myself. Sitting behind the first class seats I also had extra legroom, not bad for first time flying solo.

Jae was at the airport to pick me up, he greeted me the Hawaiian way with a beautiful set of orchard leis. We then went bak to the condo, Maui Banyon to freshen up. The condo was nice, 1 bedroom, 2 bathroom, a full kitchen, dining room, living room and washer and dryer. The weather outside was very nice, it was a bit cloudy and windy but really warm. After steak sandwiches we went to the local Safeway to buy some groceries. Since there was a kitchen with all the cookware, making our own breakfast was a no brainer. We also bought some ice cream and some other items for lunch tomorrow.

Soon I was out and about. A few minute’s walk took me to a shoppinig plaza, there I looked at all the Hawaii t-shirts, snorkling gear, sarongs and jewelery. Seeing a sign for Hawaiian icecream, I decided to try a scoop, afterall it may just taste different. The chocolate macademia wasn’t really good, I prefer creamier icecream, and this icecream wasn’t too creamy and the nuts were not macadimia, they were brown and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. By the time I finished checkinig out all the stores it was 6 and the sun was setting. I walked across the street and went to the beach. The sand is very clean and soft different from the ones in San Diego. It felt really good to sink your feet into the sand as you walk. There were about half a dozen people there just walking around. I took a few pictures and then sat down on the sand to enjoy the sunset.